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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827567">Et in Arcadia Ego</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurie/pseuds/Laurie'>Laurie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tenet (2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Dark, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Time Travel, but again not really, but not really</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:07:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,728</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827567</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurie/pseuds/Laurie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“How much have you had to drink?” is what Neil says, getting himself under control, and the man tries to smile but doesn’t quite get there.</p><p>“I’m not on the job, am I?” he rasps out with a strange look, like it’s some sort of an inside joke Neil is supposed to get.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>155</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Et in Arcadia Ego</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm going to have to ask you to suspend your disbelief and your logic and to not think too hard on this one. To quote a Tenet character: don't think about it too much, just feel it... :D</p><p>John goes back to change things. He still stumbles upon Neil.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neil always worries too much about the Christmas shifts, or at least that’s what his more skilled and experienced colleagues tell him. Sure, the number of patients coming in every other second is quite mad, but it’s not actual neurosurgery most of the time. Instead, they get to deal with simpler and much more common stuff than that: ODs, DUI accidents, domestic violence and a bunch of homeless people frozen half to death for a spice.</p><p>Too busy to let his thoughts wander about outside of the textbooks and stitches and new surgery techniques he has to learn at any given time during his internship for the rest of the year, it’s only at Christmas Neil lets himself admit how so very soul-destroying the actual medical work is. Until he started working at the hospital, he’d never really understood just how awful people could be, how free they felt to abuse and insult total strangers.</p><p><em>You’re gonna be a neurosurgeon, </em>his friends keep telling him when he panics enough to admit his fears and worries out loud, <em>how can you actually be scared of a little knife wound in the gut.</em></p><p>But Neil still doesn’t let it go, isn’t sure if he should, really – he doesn’t want to turn bitter and cynical like most people in his profession do, before he hits thirty. Neurosurgery is brilliant and prestige and almost a separate cast of people, sure, but getting someone’s brain open on the table, Neil doesn’t really get to experience much of actual communication.</p><p>And that’s the thing he’s not so good at. At least, not even close to being as good as he is at Burr holes, which he’s sure he could do with his eyes closed.</p><p>But Christmas is not the time for Burr holes and brilliant twenty-hour long surgeries in the operating theatre. Christmas means every doctor – intern, resident, fellow, what have you – bumping shoulders in the ER, inserting catheters and IVs and doing such mundane tasks as speaking to patients.</p><p>“Go meet the ambulance,” his resident calls at him, maneuvering between a family of patients with what seems to be a collective and rather explosive food poisoning. “Arriving in a minute. They got some aggressive nutter, Sanders said they tried to cuff him.”</p><p>Relieved at not having to make small talk with the old lady who’s got third degree burns cooking the Christmas turkey, Neil puts the ointments down and steps away from her. He’s still a little apprehensive as he’s making his way to the ambulance, and he imagines having to fight the injured bloke they’re trying to deliver into the hospital, and he’s just too exhausted to have to deal with that.</p><p>The ambulance doors swing open as Neal approaches, and it’s chaos inside. Two paramedics are struggling to hold down a bloke who’s thrashing about so violently he might as well be fighting for his life. Neil never liked this kind of loonies – too energy and time consuming for every bloody doctor in the hospital, making their jobs hard for some ridiculous egotistical reason, only to run off at the first opportunity when no one’s looking.</p><p>“Male, late-forties, hit and run victim,” George, the paramedic is yelling over the sound of the medical equipment being thrown about the car. Together with the other medic Neil does not know, they struggle to drag the stretcher out of the car, just as the patient yells: “<em>Let me go! Let me fucking go, I’m fine, I’m fucking fine, let me go—”</em></p><p>And judging by the sheer level of force the man is displaying and the two paramedics barely able to hold him down, Neil is inclined to believe him. He sighs, grabbing the chart George pushes into his hands, and makes the mistake of catching the patient’s eyes.</p><p>The man stops all of his thrashing about at once, freezing mid-movement like some grotesque marble statue they dig out from underground. His sharp gasp is so loud it might as well have sounded inside Neil’s own head, making his own limbs freeze mid-air as their eyes lock. The man is… beautiful, in a haggard and tortured kind of way, with his brown eyes and full bloodied lips and black unkept beard, grey hairs popping here and there. But the way he looks at him is earth-shattering and raw and profound, eyes going huge and round as if he’s seen a long-lost son, presumably dead, as if he’s seen something he never thought he could see. Neil’s heart stops in his chest, before resuming double-speed and he scorches feverishly through his memory, trying to remember if he’d ever seen this man before, and coming up short – because he’d certainly know if he had, he’d certainly not forget—</p><p>“<em>Christ</em>,” the man rasps out, voice hoarse and raspy with disuse, or probably with uncalled for amount of alcohol Neil can smell off him, and Neil makes himself ignore the way a jolt of electricity runs through his body, all the way to his fingertips.</p><p>“What’s your name, sir?” Neil forces out, as they quickly move through the corridor into the chaotic crowded ER down the hall, and the man snaps out of whatever trance he’s been in and shakes his head violently. Nothing comes out of his mouth, not that Neil expected it to. He looks the man over, eyes caught on the golden band around the man’s ring finger, and yet another jolt of something electric pulses through him.</p><p>“Sir, is there anyone we can contact? You wife, maybe?”</p><p>What comes out of the man’s mouth is neither a laugh nor a scream, more of a screeching sound, reminding Neil inexplicably of the old pipes in his childhood home in the middle of a silent night. It’s the most disturbing sound he’s ever heard, chilly sort of fear and unease gripping at his insides. <em>Your wife</em>, the bloke is mouthing silently, in between the violent fits of giggles-spasms that shake through his body, the look on his face is an unsettling mix of shock, pain and amusement.</p><p>“How about you waste your time gaping when there isn’t an ER full of sick people!” his resident snarls at him, suddenly right there in his face, and Neil snaps out of this surreal hypnotic thing he’s been experiencing. “ER two – there’s an OD waiting, chop-chop!”</p><p>It’s almost physically painful to tear himself away from this strange violent drunk, and Neil hesitates, “But I’m—”</p><p>“Now!” the resident snaps, and Neil has to turn away and walk off, but before he does:</p><p>“I’ll be back soon,” Neil whispers to the man, a promise leaving his lips on its own accord, and Neil realizes he actually means it. “I’ll find you.”</p><p>The man gives him a piercing stare. “Of course, you will,” he mutters, more to himself than anyone else, words barely audible amongst the chaotic noises of a hospital full of sick people.</p><p>Neil walks away on unsteady jelly-like legs, takes care of the OD-ed girl in ER two, then takes care of an old man with Alzheimer’s who’s lost his way home and is unable to recall his own name, then takes care of a guy with a knife wound, then another one in ER three.</p><p>By the time he gets out, throwing his gloves into the rubbish bin and missing by miles, the strange man from the ambulance is nowhere to be found. Neil searches frantically and asks around, but the nurses shrug him off and sarcastically suggest he should cuff the next drunkard to the bed himself. After he runs through the entire hospital for the third time, Neil has to admit defeat – the man is gone without so much as a trace, as if he was never there in the first place. Inexplicably disappointed, Neil goes back to work.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>It’s cold and dark in his flat as Neil throws the keys on the coffee table and immediately senses someone else’s presence in his home. He freezes mid-movement, his coat still hanging on his left shoulder, and looks around.</p><p>There’s a dark silhouette of a man, sitting in his armchair, shoulders slumped, head hung low. Warily, heart wild and fast in his throat, Neil turns on the floor lamp next to the couch. He can’t even explain it to himself, doesn’t understand it – the way he’s not surprised and strangely relieved to see the man from the hospital from days ago, slumped in his old half-rotten armchair.</p><p>“I didn’t know you were a med student,” the man says in lieu of greeting, as if his words make even the tiniest bit of sense.</p><p>Neil swallows past the cotton lump in his throat, finishes undressing himself with shaky hands.</p><p>“I bet you also didn’t know I was an Aquarius and enjoyed long walks on the beach.” They’re not even a minute in, and yet the sense of surrealism washes over him at the absurdity of this conversation.</p><p>The man bores into him with another one of those long intense stares, like he can see all the way inside Neil, right through his bullshit. “No, you don’t.”</p><p>“No. I don’t,” Neil agrees.</p><p>He looks the man over and only then registers the way the guy is crumpled up, favoring his left side. Upon closer look, Neil realizes the dark spot smearing the man’s shirt is, indeed, blood oozing out of the wound across his ribs.</p><p>“You should be in a hospital!” Neil says with a frown, but his hands are already fishing out his first-aid kit from under the couch.</p><p>“I don’t need hospitals,” the man mutters disdainfully, as if the notion itself is somehow offensive to him. “You are a doctor, <em>apparently</em>,” – a piercing, somehow accusing, look at Neil – “just patch me up and I’ll be on my way.”</p><p>“I’m not a proper doctor yet,” Neil says for some reason, as he already knows he’ll be helping the guy anyway, words of precaution and warnings wasted in the stale air between them.</p><p>“And I wouldn’t hold your breath,” The man mumbles under his breath, but Neil hears him just fine. Distantly, he wonders what the hell is wrong with him – partaking in this, whatever <em>this</em> is.</p><p>He crouches on his knees in front of the man, smells the distinct alcohol in his breath, wonders if this man is on the run from the law for killing someone or robbing a bank, perhaps, or maybe he just drowned himself in alcohol in some shithole of a bar for no reason other than being a pathetic drunk. Somehow, Neil doubts either is true.</p><p>“What have you done?” He asks him instead, watching the man flinch when Neil’s fingers lift the fabric of the shirt and touch the dark bloodied skin underneath. There’s a sharp inhale and the man is watching Neil’s face as if the secrets of the universe might unfold themselves there.</p><p>“Lots of things,” The man says, and for a moment there’s something else in his voice – like a distant memory coming up to the surface. “I got up to some stuff.”</p><p>“I don’t doubt that,” Neil says, voice quiet and strangely soft to his own ears. The muscles underneath his hands quiver and contract. He gets a syringe out, charges it full of morphine.</p><p>“And I don’t doubt you’re not supposed to have that outside the hospital,” the man says, nodding at the syringe. Neil snorts, calm despite being caught in possession of illegal drugs he has no prescription for.</p><p>“Are you gonna report me?”</p><p>“To whom?” The man’s lips turn upwards just a tad, like he has forgotten how to smile, muscles having atrophied. “But it’s fine, you don’t need to use that.”</p><p>Neil pauses, syringe ready in his hand. “Are you sure?” he asks slowly, because what is this man – a certified masochist? “It’s going to hurt. <em>A lot.”</em></p><p>“Believe me, I’ve had much worse,” is all he gets in response along with a dismissive one-shoulder shrug, and Neil does believe him. Still, he can’t help but wonder what this tortured person is trying to achieve here. He tries to think of doing something so horrible he’d feel the need to punish himself for it like this, but his imagination comes up short.</p><p>“Whatever you say,” Neil says and finds that he means it. His hands glide over the man’s chest - stray gray hairs, ought-to-be-fatal scars, lean muscle, broad shoulders, smooth skin. The air is stuffed and electrified between them, and for a beat Neil is lost in a desire to run his hands across the man’s chest, feel the beat or his heart.</p><p>“How much have you had to drink?” is what he says instead, getting himself under control, and the man tries to smile but doesn’t quite get there.</p><p>“I’m not on the job, am I?” he grumbles with a strange look, like it’s some sort of an inside joke Neil is supposed to get.</p><p>Neil sighs and gets to work. Credit where credit’s due – the man barely frowns while Neil puts his needle through the un-anesthesiated skin. They’ve seen a lot of those in the ER – macho guys who’ve watched too many movies, saying things like ‘I don’t need painkillers’ and ‘I’ll be just fine, go ahead’ and then screaming and whimpering at the first sight of actual pain. But this bloke must be on a whole new level of psycho. Makes Neil wonder what kind of hell the guy has actually been through.</p><p>The corner of the man’s mouth lifts. “You’re good at this.”</p><p>And there it is again, this whole new language of things unsaid behind the man’s eyes, making Neil feel inexplicably guilty for failing to comprehend it.</p><p>“I should hope so,” he breathes out, hot and sweaty and uncomfortable in his own skin, as he finishes the last stitch, “the USMLE is right around the corner.”</p><p>The man looks like he wants to say something else – or do something else, his hand rising up – but then, abruptly, he stands – the force of it nearly sending Neil toppling back on his arse.</p><p>“Wait,” he says, gathering himself back up, “I’ll get you some bandages, they’re in my room.”</p><p>He scrambles to his room, hurried and impatient, gathers the package of bandages from his bedside table. It only takes him about ten seconds – or at least, that’s what it feels like – and yet, Neil finds the living room empty and silent when he steps back inside, the package heavy and useless in his hands.</p><p>Still, there’s something else, a new feeling of dreadful apprehension – or rather, <em>excitement</em>, as Neil throws the package on the coffee table and finally takes his shoes off. Somehow, he knows with indisputable clarity, that this was not be last he’d see of the man, and Neil just can’t help feeling giddy with the knowledge of it.</p><p>All he has to do is wait, and Neil’s nothing if not inhumanly patient.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>It’s two weeks later the next time Neil finds the man in his flat, and this time the guy’s arm is bleeding all over Neil’s beige synthetic carpet. The hole in his arm looks like an actual gunshot wound and Neil gapes.</p><p>“Have you been shot?” he exclaims, and the man looks at him like he’s a dimwit.</p><p>“No, someone <em>threw</em> a bullet at me,” the sarcasm is dripping from his voice as much as the blood is from his wounded arm. But the realization hits Neil at the moment – properly astounds him, for the first time – that this man is a <em>criminal</em>, and Neil must be suffering from some unique form of perversion if his only response to that is to become an accomplice instead of calling the police and letting them deal with whatever this is.</p><p>“I can’t treat gunshot wounds,” he admits, but the guy is shaking his head dismissively.</p><p>“You’ll do fine, come on.”</p><p>But Neil doesn’t move. He folds his arms across his chest, tries his best to look more confident than he is.</p><p>“What’s your name?” he says with bravery he doesn’t really feel. But he’s got leverage now, and if the guy wants his help, he’d better give Neil something in return this time.</p><p>“Not something you need to concern yourself with,” The man frowns, something sorrowful-painful-suffering swimming in his eyes.</p><p>“It is, if you want my help,” Neil manages to say, glad when he hears his voice has not wavered.</p><p>The man sizes him up, lets out a deep sigh – like his own arm isn’t bleeding on the carpet this very moment – mutters something under his breath that Neil can’t quite hear, but makes out the words ‘<em>again with the name.</em></p><p>“You can call me John,” he finally says and lifts his eyebrows at Neil. “Now can you get down to fixing this? It’s my right arm, I can’t do it myself.”</p><p>Neil sighs, deflating, because what is this, really? <em>You can call me John</em> – but does that mean his actual name is John? Or does that mean it was the first name he could think of to lie his way out of the question? This new bit of info, as much as Neil is going to spend hours trying to analyze and dissect it later, doesn’t really give him any valuable insight into this strange chaotic man in front of him.</p><p>John drops onto the armchair, sits back against the cushion and spreads his legs, leaving space for Neil to crouch into. The gunshot wound is right above his elbow, blood smeared all over his shirt sleeve, dripping down onto the naked skin of his abdomen underneath the open button up shirt, going all the way down to his navel, following the trail of short dark hair above the waistline of his pants. John clears his throat, and Neil’s eyes snap back up.</p><p>“Any painkillers this time?” Neil asks, already knowing the answer.</p><p>“No,” John says simply, eyes looking somewhere far away.</p><p>“Why?” Neil bellows, because he is still trying to figure this man out, and he keeps coming up short. “Do you enjoy pain, is that what this is?”</p><p>“No,” John says again, and Neil wants to grab him and give him a shake for being just so bloody infuriating. High on adrenaline, his needle pierces John’s arm with such force, John’s face crumbles, and Neil can’t help feeling malicious sort of delight, thrilled to see the man’s mask slip even a little bit, to see the man is a fucking human after all.</p><p>He doesn’t get anything else out of the man that night, and when John leaves – through the door, like a normal person this time – Neil is left with his blood boiling in his veins, restless and raw and rough around the edges.</p><p>He will get to the bottom of this, he swears to himself vehemently, washing his hands off the other man’s blood, watching it slip through drain in the sink. He’ll get to the bottom of this any way he fucking can, he’s too stubborn not to.</p><p>He’ll get to the bottom of this, whatever it takes.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>In the space in between the rare and irregular visits from John, Neil ponders what this whole situation says about himself. He thinks about it one night on his way home, after Wendy the cute nurse asked him out on a date and after Neil refused her, terrified of the idea of missing John by accident should he decide to pay him a visit. The realization horrifies him and angers him in equal measures. As far as rationalizations go in terms of avoiding having any sort of normal love life, this ranks nowhere near on top. And yet, the idea of John waiting for him at his flat, hurt and bleeding out, while Neil is out having shallow meaningless small talk over ridiculously overprized steak and wine, is unbearable to even entertain. And it’s not that Neil is a proper social outcast, but maybe he finds it easier to study by himself instead of in groups they used to have back in school, and maybe he’s often more interested in his own company than at a pub full of people he’d half-heartedly call his friends. But up to this point Neil has never thought of himself as outright <em>deviant</em> as he does now, the weird uncalled for reactions he keeps getting around John – the shaky hands, the speeding pulse, the dull sense of dread that has plagued him since he first saw the man, the apprehension of some sort of impending doom he gets when he’s around the guy, like something really bad is about to happen. In hindsight, Neil should have probably put the whole thing to an end, should have changed the locks or moved flats or changed jobs, even.</p><p>But the worst thing is – as far as his excuses go, even Neil can’t rationalize away the giddy excitement he gets whenever his mind conjures an image of the guy, whenever he thinks about putting his hands on John’s skin, wiping the blood away from his callused hands, catching the not-so-faint smell of booze and sweat sometimes coming off John in waves.</p><p>One quiet late night – or maybe really early morning – as Neil walks back home from the hospital, passing a dark smelly alley he sees a girl pressed against a wall of a building, three men surrounding her. Neil stops, before having even processed the thought, charges at the men with nothing but his bare hands as weapons, and the next moment he’s on the ground face down, someone’s feet kicking him in the stomach again and again.</p><p>Then something else happens, and there are shots fired, and Neil tries to get up but he’s pinned down by something – someone – heavy, as the girl is screaming and screaming somewhere that seems very far away. He curses, and then the weight is lifted off him and strong hands grab him by the shoulders and manhandle him back on his feet. John’s face swims in front of him, and maybe Neil should check his eyesight or check his brain for concussion, because he can’t be actually seeing three shot bodies lying on the filthy alley floor around him, because that would be fucking <em>psychotic</em>.</p><p>But John is stacking the gun in his coat and dragging him away by the arm, away from what must be an actual <em>crime scene</em> – <em>Jesus Christ</em> – and Neil might really have been damaged in the head, because he follows the man blindly and without a word like a good little dog, the only reason for that being that this is <em>John.</em></p><p>He has no idea where they’re going and somehow finds himself back at the hospital, his own colleagues speaking to him in soft hushed tones, as if he was a frightened child, shining lights into his eyes and checking his pupils’ response and looking through his hair for signs of head wounds.</p><p>Somewhere along the line, John has disappeared into thin air.</p><p>When Neil sees him next, two days later, sprawled in Neil’s armchair like he owns it, Neil just exhales slowly and goes over to look at the damage. He is silent as he scans John’s chest, John’s collarbones, John’s forearms, and the man lets him, his dark eyes burning a hole in Neil’s head while grief and madness radiate from him like air-borne bacteria.</p><p>“You’re not injured,” Neil concludes when he finishes his examination, but his hands stay over the man’s ribs, barely enough pressure to call it a touch. John doesn’t respond. “Why are you here then?”</p><p>“Couldn’t help myself,” barely a whisper – a low rasp.</p><p>Neil feels his own treacherous hands creep lower, all the way down to the man’s waistline.</p><p>It’s dark in the room – it almost always is because John keeps creeping into his home at nighttime, without fail. Maybe it’s safer that way – or should he say, less dangerous – for him, maybe it’s a matter of convenience, or maybe it’s simply a case of being able to hide away from Neil, an attempt at preventing Neil from seeing the actual level of John’s psychosis.</p><p>It must be psychosis since the alternative is John being an actual psychopath, because you can’t be this good at pain and suffering and killing people in dark alleys without being a psychopath.</p><p>“Did you follow me?” Neil asks him, both anticipating and dreading the answer. “When I was walking from the hospital?”</p><p>“What?” John says with a frown, like he’s no idea what Neil is on about.</p><p>“When those men attacked me,” Neil says slowly, watching the man’s face closely. Maybe it’s worse than he thought, because John looks like he has no recollection of that day’s events, and one does not simply shoot three men point blank and forget about that the next day. “How did you know I was there?”</p><p>John is silent for a long time, before letting out a long breath. “Fuck,” he mutters, closing his eyes and rubbing at his overgrown beard. He sounds more exhausted than Neil feels. “When?”</p><p>“What do you mean, <em>when</em>?” Neil sputters, his hands gripping John’s thighs. “On Wednesday, the day that was cold and cloudy, the Imagine Dragons were performing at the O2 stadium, and, oh yes, you <em>killed three people!”</em></p><p>“What time was it?” John inquires, standing up suddenly, Neil’s wayward hands falling back to his side. Indeed, he thinks, this might be about the strangest conversation he’s ever had in his life.</p><p>“I don’t know – around three, four am?” He says, marveling at the sudden change in John, who stands straighter, taller somehow, more businesslike, more purposeful. “You really don’t remember?!”</p><p>John sends him a wry look, corners of his mouth turned downwards in a bitter twist.</p><p>“I’ve got to go,” he mutters and brushes past Neil on his way to the door, leaving Neil glued to the spot, dumbfounded and disturbed and a little bit obsessed.</p><p>He’ll fucking get to the bottom of this.</p><p>***</p><p>Neil can come up with dozens of reasons for why he shouldn’t like John. He lists them all in his head like a mantra on his way to work, goes over them again on his way back home. It goes: John is old enough to be his father; John is unkept and smells of alcohol; John is brooding and silent and mad and infuriating; John will make him lose his medical license with all the illegal patching-up they’ve been doing; John does his best to disrupt the cozy and safe rhythms and rituals of Neil’s everyday life… and so it goes on and on. John is part dangerous, part mad, and a dash of a death wish for a spice. Sometimes he goes missing for weeks, and Neil is restless and worried he’s drunk himself to death. The list never finishes. Neil concludes with <em>John is a psychotic drunk murderer who will probably get me killed or locked away in jail.</em></p><p>And yet, he wants to be closer to John. He wants to be with John, even when John doesn’t seem to want it back, even when John doesn’t seem to want pretty much anything, really.</p><p>He must be screwed up in the head, Neil realizes, analyzing his own physical and psychological responses to the man – and once he even wonders if there ever was a deep childhood trauma that Neil can’t recall, that made him like this. Made him this curious, this unbothered, this obsessed with the madman showing up in his flat – his mood as random and unpredictable as a lottery game each time he shows up, one time disproportionally angry at Neil offering him tequila for a drink, another time inexplicably awestruck at Neil putting on his glasses, as if he’d never seen such a thing before.</p><p>But Neil’s childhood was just as boring and uneventful as his adult life used to be before John. No trauma to blame for the way he keeps letting himself be dragged further and further into this mad vortex that is John’s random presence in his life.</p><p><em>It’ll be fine</em>, a tiny voice keeps ringing in his head when he thinks about it too hard. <em>It’ll be fine.</em></p><p>Because it’s John.</p><p>
  <em>It’s John.</em>
</p><p>And Neil isn't sure what that means, exactly, but his brain keeps insisting that it's important: it's John.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>“Who did you lose?” Neil asks him once when he’s finished bandaging the cut on John’s arm. It’s obvious to him now, that John only had it checked and bandaged as an excuse to come here. He’s seen the man’s body a time too many – <em>not enough, still</em> – now, noticed the countless scars, rough-looking self-stitched lacerations and burns and what must be at least several other gunshots. John didn’t <em>need</em> to get this cut bandaged.</p><p>John looks over at him with those dead eyes, maybe a little surprised at the question, when, really, he shouldn’t be. Neil’s not an idiot, and it would be obvious to a complete moron that John has lost someone – a kid, a wife, an entire family, <em>someone</em>. Someone died and John stayed with the abyss behind his eyes and the suicidal impulses behind his actions.</p><p>“It’s ‘<em>whom</em> did I lose,’ not ‘<em>who</em>,’” John says lips barely moving, as still and silent as a photograph.</p><p>“Whom, then?” Neil pushes, ignoring the thought that it might be better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary confrontations with someone he’s witnessed committing murder, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of his tongue.</p><p>“My partner,” John rasps out, and his hand flies to rub at his right wrist. Upon closer look, Neil notices some kind of bracelet made of a red string wrapped around John’s wrist. Distantly, he wonders if it’s been there this whole time and he just never noticed.</p><p>“What happened?” Neil presses on, something huge and hot uncoiling in his chest, his limbs going numb with pent-up tension and the electricity in the air between them.</p><p>John lets out a mirthless little chuckle, squeezes his eyes shut.</p><p>“Fate.”</p><p>And then John looks at him, really looks at him – like he actually sees Neil and not someone he wishes Neil was instead, not someone Neil probably reminds him of. He wonders, briefly, at himself, at his bravery to do this right there and then, before he leans forward, hands pinning John’s wrists to the armrests, and kisses him.</p><p>John responds in way Neil never dreamt of – surging forward with relentless force, knocking all breath out of Neil, his mouth devouring Neil’s very soul, and Neil suddenly finds himself on John’s lap, John’s arms everywhere on his body at once, pulling him closer, closer, closer.</p><p>“<em>Neil</em>,” John moans into his mouth, and fuck if it isn’t the first time he’s ever heard John call him by his name, and Neil is melting against him and yearning for more and damn-near close enough to begging for god only knows what.</p><p>“<em>Yeah</em>,” he pants into John’s mouth, the man’s beard scratching at his chin. “Yes, anything you want, anything—”</p><p>And it’s true, he realizes, as soon as the words leave his mouth. John can make him kneel and use his mouth like a back-alley whore, can bend him over and fuck him until he bleeds, and Neil will let him. It’s a dangerous kind of power John has over him, and it’s intoxicating and mad and Neil’s never wanted anything more than he wants this.</p><p>But then.</p><p>As quickly as it started, it suddenly stops, and Neil’s hands close around thin air, as John stands and pushes him off. He’s hard, Neil can see, as hard as Neil is, and he’s panting and choking and looking madder than ever before.</p><p>“No, no, don’t go,” Neil is saying, because he knows this look, has seen this expression of wrecked hurt and misery and grief too many times on John’s face to know what comes next. “<em>Please</em>.”</p><p>But John is already at the door, and the next moment he’s gone without another word.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Neil doesn’t know where John goes and what he does when he’s not with Neil. As far as Neil is concerned, John’s life is none-existent outside of the context of Neil’s small dark flat, and Neil can’t even imagine him in any different setting, like he can’t imagine the characters of ‘Friends’ drinking coffee anywhere else other than ‘Central Café.’ He tries to think of John completing dull mundane tasks like going for groceries or waiting in a queue for the ATM, but it’s always off and surreal.</p><p>John might be a spy. John might be a government secret agent. John might be a serial killer.</p><p>Neither of these options will change anything at this point, though, and so Neil gives it up.</p><p>He doesn’t see John for more than a month, and he develops a new little strategy, where he tries not to think too much about the man – not to forget him, but to remember him more accurately. He doesn’t have photos or videos to look at, anyway, and there’re only half-faded images of John in his mind to go by. After a while, these scraps harden into a kind of narrative that crowds out hundreds of equally valid memories, shunting the losers to some cluttered basement storage area in his brain. And then, there’d be days when something just clicks, and all kinds of stuff start popping into his head: <em>John</em> <em>breathing hard through his nose, eyes fogged with pain, hand gripping Neil’s shoulder as Neil stitches him up </em>or <em>John, leaning back against the armchair, eyes boring into Neil, really seeing him </em>and <em>John’s tongue, hot and wet in his mouth, John’s fingers sinking into his shoulders</em>. It is all there, locked in a vault in the furthest corner of his mind, an immense fortune from which Neil can make only small, all-too-infrequent withdrawals.</p><p>A month comes and goes. John doesn’t come.</p><p>Neil waits. This isn’t the end of this.</p><p>**</p><p>It’s spring when John shows up again and the smell of booze reaches Neil before the sight of John does.</p><p>When he does look at him there’s red <em>everywhere</em>.</p><p>“What have you done now?” Neil hisses, stumbling across the small room to find the source of the bleed. John has knife wounds all over his abdomen, bleeding furiously all over his clothes, dripping into a little crimson pool on the floor. “What the fuck have you done!”</p><p><em>This is the way they die</em>, Neil thinks distantly, blinking at all the blood before him, <em>this is</em> <em>how men like John die</em>– drunk and alone, in the pool of his own blood or vomit, no one around to help or care or even remember.</p><p>“I don’t know, I don’t know what I’ve done,” John is rambling, voice low and hoarse, and Neil manhandles him down onto the couch. “I thought I could—I thought things would change—”</p><p>“Yes, yes,” Neil is saying for the sake of saying anything at all, a feeble attempt at comforting a man who’s already halfway into his own grave. He fumbles around with his gloves, hands shaky and unsteady, because there shouldn’t be this much blood, it shouldn’t be all over the couch already.</p><p>“I thought—if I went back earlier—” John is saying feverishly, as Neil fishes out the morphine syringe he’s kept in the fridge, thinks <em>fuck it</em>, inserts the whole thing into John’s vein.</p><p>After a few beats, John’s eyes slide shut. Neil hurries to get his med-kit out, gets the needle ready and sanitized.</p><p>“<em>Do you understand</em>?” John croaks out and swallows hard, eyes still shut tight. “<em>Do you get it, Neil?”</em></p><p>“Get what?” Neil says, impatient and distracted, because John is drunk on booze and high on adrenaline and shitload of morphine, and Neil’s not going to pay too much attention to his feverish ramblings.</p><p>And yet.</p><p>“I didn’t change <em>anything</em>,” John says, and his eyes open, lids heavy and swollen. “Whatever happened will happen, just like you always said.”</p><p>And Neil is trying hard not to listen, not to let it affect him, but the sense of impending doom washes over him stronger than ever, and he feels like he’s missing something huge and important, a vital piece of puzzle that’d let him see the whole, bigger picture.</p><p>“I never said that,” he lets out, voice shaky and uneven. His hands are trembling over John’s skin and he’s sweating profoundly. John doesn’t seem to hear him.</p><p>“I can’t go back now—no matter—how many times I try—I can’t go back,” John pants, his whole body spasming with silent sobs, shaking under Neil’s already unsteady hands.</p><p>“Shh, come on, stay still, mate,” Neil hisses, and John’s eyes bore into his, lucid and clear for only a split moment, with a familiar intensity Neil can’t really hide from. “Back where? What is there – <em>back</em>?”</p><p>“Nothing,” John breathes, barely audible. “There’s nothing.”</p><p>It’s hours later when he finishes, trying to wipe sweat off his forehead and instead smearing John’s blood across his face. By then, John is out cold, morphine and alcohol taking their toll. Neil stands, swaying on his feet, then gets the old woolen blanket from the wardrobe and covers John with it.</p><p>He should take a shower, get the man’s blood off his hands and face and probably hair. But he drops on his bed face-down, instead, and falls asleep before his head hits the pillow.</p><p>In the morning, John is gone.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>He waits and waits and waits some more. It’s almost summer now, but Neil’s nothing if not patient.</p><p>Days come and go. John doesn’t show up.</p><p>Neil waits.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>On Monday in June Neil aces his USMLE, top of the class. On Tuesday, Neil quits the medical program.</p><p>Detached, he wonders what he should do with his life next.</p><p>His flat is cold and empty and silent, and Neil sits in the armchair and stares at the bloodstains on the cushions.</p><p>He waits.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>In November, he enrolls into a physics post-grad. He is twenty-eight now, a little older than most of his classmates, but Neil has an MD behind his shoulders and an unhealthy obsession with getting to the bottom of things that cannot be explained.</p><p>He waits. It’s been months now.</p><p>John doesn’t come back.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>Neil will get to the bottom of this, he’s sworn so. Whatever it takes.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>In Portobello one bright sunny morning, Neil catches the sight of a golden charm on a red string. It’s only two pounds, but Neil would’ve got it even if it cost a hundred. He ties it around the zipper of his briefcase, and every time he looks at it, it reminds him of dark skin and stuffed air and scratchy beard against his cheeks.</p><p>He adds the memory to the vault he keeps locked at the back of his mind. He’ll see John again – it’s a fact as indisputable as that the objects at rest will remain at rest, and objects in motion will remain in motion at the same velocity.</p><p>Neil just has to keep going in motion, he thinks, watching the charm on the red string swing back and forth with his every step. He’s nothing if not patient.</p><p>***</p><p>He’s thirty and just about to get his PhD when he sees John again.</p><p>But then.</p><p>This is not John. This man is more than a decade younger and groomed and sane and looks at Neil with polite interest and maybe a touch of sadness, and Neil understands now. He understands it even before John takes him into a faceless facility – all cement and glass – and shows him the turnstile. <em>Neil understands.</em></p><p>He watches this John button his posh tailored suit, brush the none-existent dust off his sleeve, and thinks of another John on the couch in his tiny old flat, his filthy ancient shirt falling apart as Neil cuts through it to get to the injured skin underneath.</p><p>He understands now, he’s got to the bottom of this, but that doesn’t make it any simpler, still.</p><p>This man, who is not John, smiles at him and puts a warm hand on his shoulder, and maybe Neil will get there in time, will get to the point where it’s less messy, less complicated and mad, and maybe John will meet him halfway.</p><p>He’s got time now, more time than he knows what to do with. And Neil’s nothing if not patient.</p><p> </p><p>The end.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is more like what I originally had in mind when I started writing 'May Contain Nuts.' In true Tenet fashion I've actually gone backwards from writing happy fix-its to composing thousands of words of hurt with no comfort. Oh well, here's a classic tragic love story with character out of synch and out of time.</p><p>As always, your comments make me warm and happy inside and are much, much appreciated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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